Breathe
by Apollo's Girl 319
Summary: A stolen scene set during Sectionals. Rachel begins to panic about her solo. One-Shot


**Author's Note:** It seems that my head likes to make up stolen scenes between Rachel and Puck. Please review - comments help a lot! =D

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She found a small room off to the side trying to find a way to breathe. Everyone was trying to learn the new song that Finn brought in and figure out the choreography before they went on stage. It was so rushed and hectic and she just couldn't breathe.

And she was going to sing solo. Today was going to be a day for her to truly shine and she didn't think she could do it. For the first time she truly felt panicked at the idea of singing and she didn't know what to do. She had changed into her costume in hopes that it would calm her down, but instead had her thinking more. So she just stared at the wall trying to find her breath.

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Puck looked up from the music sheet as he watched Mike and Britney figure out the dance steps. The others were practicing the harmonies and trying to memorize the words. Quinn kept throwing looks over to Finn as he did everything to not look at the two of them. Puck could still feel his anger but had hoped in some small way that his friend would forgive him. Knowing it was too soon he went back to his music sheet when he realized that Rachel wasn't in the room.

He glanced around the room to make sure but when he didn't see her he made his way to room off to the side. He saw her standing staring at the wall. He saw the tension rolling off her in waves. Surprised, he walked up to her.

"Berry." He said quietly, but he didn't get a response from her. He moved till he was next to her placing a hand on her shoulder. "Rachel?"

"Wha-?" She whispered in surprise. She briefly looked up to see who had touched her. When her eyes connected with his green ones, he could see the panic.

"You ok?" She just looked at him and couldn't say anything, just shook her head. "Hey, you can do this." At that Rachel just shook her head harder as she looked down at her feet. Puck wasn't quite sure what to do. His hand was still on her shoulder and he turned her so that her body could face him. Using his other hand he lifted her chin up so that she would look back up at him.

They hadn't truly spoken to one another other then glee related things - nothing about the baby, Quinn or Finn, nothing that mattered. The one look they shared in the hall seemed to communicate enough between them that nothing needed to be said at the time. Now looking at her, he was confused where this panic was coming from. If anything Rachel Berry could take on anything she put her mind to.

"This is a piece of cake. You already said you have a song that you been working on for, what forever? You got it in the bag." He said, but it did nothing to lessen the panic in her eyes. "What's wrong?"

Rachel wanted to tell him. Wanted to believe everything he was saying and in a way she knew that she could do this, but that feeling wouldn't go away. It just sat there on top of her chest pushing down so hard that she was going to fail. She just kept staring up into his green eyes while his hand continued to hold her chin up. Yet, all that kept going around in her head was that she was going to screw this up. Like so many things that she screwed up in glee. It wasn't until he murmured his nickname for her did she feel like she could speak, "Caroline?"

"I don't think I can." She finally whispered.

"Why?" He dropped his hand from her chin and brushed her hair away from her face. She again shook her head and tried to come up with something. When nothing came out she turned away from him, bringing her arms back around herself and stared at the wall, trying to get the thoughts in her head to stop.

Puck tried his best to figure out what was going on in her head. She wasn't the easiest one to figure out with all that craziness. However, despite their brief thing, he knew that she kept a lot to herself. She put a lot of pressure on herself and it was not quite the same pressure that she presented to the rest of the world. He knew that she didn't always like what she saw and that she, like the rest of them were just trying to find some way to deal.

"Caroline." He said quietly to her again as brought her up against him, his hands on her shoulders. "Whatever it is that's making you think you can't do this, it's just cold feet. You can do this, you do this every day. You sing your heart out at every rehearsal, at home, at school, everywhere. You are not going to screw this up."

At that comment she gave a very unlady-like snort, throwing her head up, leaning it against his shoulder, her eyes gazing at the ceiling. "Just like I haven't screwed up everything for glee?" Puck paused at that comment, not quite sure how to respond. Rachel dropped her arms and stepped away from him again. Turning to face him she looked in straight into his eyes, "All I've done is screw things up for glee. First, that stupid choreographer, the commercial, leaving for that stupid play, telling Finn. Everything I've done has somehow screwed up everything for glee."

Puck didn't know how to respond. His first thought was how non-speechy this was for Rachel. No big vocabulary words which worried him. Two was how to tell her that it was all ok without making it into something worse.

"So what?" Rachel's eyes got wide at that. "So what you screwed up a couple of times? We all screw up at some point."

"This is big Noah. I can't screw up something this big!"

"Again so what?" Puck threw out. He grabbed her again by the shoulders. When she tried to pull away, he tightened his hold. "Rachel, yes you've screwed up, but you also fixed what you could. Yeah we all want to win, but we wouldn't be having you go up there and sing if you weren't the only one who could. If you screw up, so what? It would still be better than anything any of us would do up there."

"I can't do it again. I just can't ruin things again. I don't want that." She bit out - anger, frustration building up again in her chest and that pressure that kept pressing.

"You aren't going to."

"How do you know? _How_?" Tears began to fall. Puck reached up to wipe it away, but it just caused Rachel to turn from him and back towards the wall.

"I just do. We all do, otherwise we wouldn't have chosen you to do this. Despite everything Rachel, you are the person that holds us together. It's not Finn, as much as everyone acts like it is. You hold glee together." Puck said as he wrapped his arms around her waist. He whispered into her ear. "You have this, you are the star and nothing is going to take that away today."

"I can't…"

"Yes you can."

"I don't know how…"

"You just need to breathe. Just take a breath."

Rachel felt every tear as they escaped and tried so hard to stop. To believe what Puck was saying, yet everything was fighting against it.

"Come on Caroline, one breath at a time." He coaxed repeatedly until she took a breath. With each breath she slowly found her way pass the panic. He held her, whispering _breathe_, until she could do it on her own.

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**Author's Note: **Hopefully Puck wasn't too out of character in terms of how he spoke.


End file.
